A police investigation has found that a man who went on a stabbing spree in Taipei last month acted alone and that the fall from a building that killed him was not an accident, but police remain unsure of what motivated the attacks.
The 27-year-old suspect, Chang Wen (張文), killed three people and injured 11 during the attack. He fell from the rooftop of the Eslite Spectrum Nanxi store near MRT Zhongshan Station on Dec. 19 after being pursued by police, and was later pronounced dead.
The investigation found that he planned the attack meticulously and began buying supplies, including gas masks and smoke grenades, more than a year and a half ago.
Photo: CNA
Before the attack, Chang destroyed his laptop and left his bank account nearly empty, police said.
He chose the department store rooftop as his route, and the angle of his fall indicated it was not accidental, according to police.
The investigation gained access to files Chang had stored online, showing he planned the attack ahead of time and executed it largely according to his plan, while also indicating that he acted alone.
Police said they still had not determined a clear motive behind Chang’s actions, despite the considerable amount of information they accessed.
The investigation looked into Chang’s time in school, military service and work history, and found no evidence that he was bullied in school or the military, they said.
Police suggested that other factors might have contributed to his actions.
Police said the investigation is ongoing, and that its final report is expected to be released soon.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS